Marjan

Marjan was a male lion of Kabul Zoo in Afghanistan, and in his last months probably the most famous lion in the world. His name is the Dari and Persian word for coral. Born in West Germany in 1976, he was given to Kabul Zoo by Cologne Zoo in 1978, when he was about two, and soon afterwards a lioness named Chucha joined him. Over the next two decades he lived through the whole of Afghanistan’s turmoil: the communist coup, the Soviet occupation, the civil war between the mujahideen factions and the rule of the Taliban.

During the civil war of the 1990s Kabul Zoo stood on a front line. It was shelled many times, its animals died or were stolen, and its medical store was destroyed. On 27 March 1995 a fighter climbed into the lions’ enclosure to show off his courage to his friends. He stroked Chucha, who did nothing, but Marjan attacked and killed him. The next day the man’s brother threw a hand grenade into the enclosure in revenge. Marjan survived, but he was left blind in one eye or both, partly deaf, lame and without his teeth, so that he could no longer eat meat on the bone; a ramp was built to help him back into his den.

After the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, foreign journalists found the old, scarred lion in the ruined zoo, and his story went around the world. Animal welfare groups, zoo associations and zoos abroad sent money, medicines, vets and nurses. It was too late: Marjan died of old age on 25 January 2002, at about 25. He was given both private and public funerals and buried in the zoo, where a bronze statue of him now stands at the entrance. Afghans saw in him a symbol of their own survival and of the wish for peace; in March 2002 China sent the zoo two lions to replace him.